Lies the government told you by Andrew Napolitano (big screen ebook reader .TXT) 📕

the North Pacific free for Japan’s attack fleet to approach Hawaiian waters. As explained by Rear Admiral Richmond K. Turner, the War Plans officer for the Navy at the time, “We were prepared to divert traffic when we believed that war was imminent. We sent the traffic down via the Torres Strait, so that the track of the Japanese task force would be clear of any traffic.”6 The order was sent to Admiral Kimmel and San Francisco’s 12th Naval District on November 25th 1941, one hour after the Japanese fleet set sail for Pearl Harbor. Following orders, Kimmel pulled his Pacific Fleet back to Pearl Harbor, opening up the entire Pacific Ocean for the Japanese, and leaving Pearl Harbor as the biggest sitting duck in history.

Even more egregious were the orders from naval headquarters when Kimmel attempted to conduct an exercise with his forces to the north of Hawaii in the very same location the Japanese used in early December 1941 to start their attack. Kimmel had scheduled an exercise to prepare for a possible Hawaiian attack for November 21st 1941. Admiral Royal E. Ingersoll, Assistant Chief of Naval Operations, told Kimmel to expect a surprise aggressive movement from the Japanese, but not to place the fleet in a position that would precipitate Japanese action. President Roosevelt would not allow Admiral Kimmel to stop Japan’s advance toward the United States.

Even when the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor became a certainty, FDR continued to order Kimmel to exercise restraint. On November 27th and 28th 1941, Roosevelt warned of possible hostile action by Japan, but did not mention Hawaii. He also instructed commanders to “execute appropriate defensive deployment” and “undertake reconnaissance,” but stressed that “United States policy calls for Japan to commit the first overt act.” President Roosevelt was not concerned with protecting American lives or property; he would and did largely sacrifice them as an excuse for a world war. These messages prevented Kimmel from taking any active precautions to try to preempt an attack. Furthermore, the government instructed General Short that he should mainly be on the lookout for sabotage and espionage, and that “protective measures should be confined to those essential to security, avoiding unnecessary publicity and alarm.”

President Roosevelt finally got his wish. In the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, 2,403 American men, women, and children were killed, and 1,178 were wounded. Sunday, December 7th 1941, was “a date which will live in infamy,” on more than one level. In response to the attack, and continuing the lie, Roosevelt implored Congress to declare war on Japan, calling the massacre at Pearl Harbor an “unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan.” The attack on Pearl Harbor was secretly provoked, undoubtedly anticipated, and ardently hoped for by the privately lying President who publicly condemned it. The infamy was his.

The shameful and downright cowardly aspect of the Pearl Harbor story is that President Roosevelt did not have to resort to deception. By 1941, Roosevelt had been elected president not once, not twice, but three times. He was the boss. He also knew that Nazi Germany represented an incredibly serious threat to American and global freedom and safety; the Nazis were mass murderers who sought to take over the world. If Roosevelt found it prudent to enter World War II, he should have done so. He should have been honest with the American people, instead of lying and sacrificing 2,403 American lives. It is nice to be able to gain your country’s support, but we do not live in a true democracy. We elect our representatives, trusting them to make decisions to protect our freedom. The United States’ effort in War World II would not have been considered any less heroic if Roosevelt had leveled with us, instead of developing an elaborate, murderous scheme to deceive us. In the end, the United States spent about forty months fighting World War II, and 405,399 American service personnel were killed, 291,557 of whom died in combat.7

Another serious problem with Roosevelt’s scheme is that he acted knowing that provoking an “overt act” could result in substantial American deaths. He was willing to trade American lives for a ticket to war with Germany. This is “dastardly.” It is never, under any circumstances, necessary, moral, or lawful for the government intentionally to kill or permit the killing of known innocents.

President Roosevelt was a lawyer, but he must have been absent during the first week of law school.8 The famous English case of The Queen v. Dudley and Stephens (1884), which is typically taught during a law student’s first week of the first-year criminal law course, states that intentional killing of the innocent is never reasonable or lawful or morally justifiable, no matter the circumstances. Tom Dudley, Edwin Stephens, Edmund Brooks, and Richard Parker were in a boat, stranded on the high seas. After having gone seven days without food, and five days without water, Dudley and Stephens decided to kill Parker and feed on his carcass so that they would not starve to death while waiting for assistance. (Brooks was not involved in the decision, but Dudley and Stephens claimed he agreed.) As a result, instead of all four crewmembers succumbing to death, three lives were saved at the expense of just one. Dudley and Stephens, nevertheless, were prosecuted and convicted of murder. According to the English High Court of Justice, “To preserve one’s life is generally speaking a duty, but it may be the plainest and the highest duty to sacrifice it.”

President Roosevelt did not personally kill 2,403 Americans at Pearl Harbor, but the same principle applies. He welcomed an attack he knew would certainly result in thousands of American casualties. In the long term, he undoubtedly preserved lives by entering World War II, but his murderous offense in starting the war is not morally, legally, or constitutionally justified.

“They Fired at Us First.”

For much of the twentieth century, the United States government used the threat of communism and the Cold War to justify armed conflict with numerous Asian